the goan I network
PANAJI
Stating that those employed in the sand mining profession were the latest victims of unemployment in the mining industry, sand miners on Friday sought relaxation of the government’s guidelines for sand miners. The government has not been renewing the license of sand miners citing their non-compliance to the guidelines laid down for them.
Vishal Volvoikar, Chief of the Mandovi Traditional Sand Extraction Association, expressed that if the government did not want to relax the guidelines for sand miners, then a subsidy needed to be given to sand miners. The guidelines for sand mining state that fiber canoes need to replace steel canoes, which Volvoikar says is too expensive.
“We are finding it difficult to replace our steel boats with fiber boats. We can’t even take a loan for the same as banks are refusing us based on our inability to provide our license. But this is a vicious circle as we are not being given our license if we don’t have fiber boats,” said Volvoikar, addressing the press at the Congress headquarters.
Volvoikar said that sand miners had spent around Rs 4,50,000 for steel canoes already. The sand miners had also cleared their dues of Rs 75,000 with the Mines Department last year, and had renewed their licenses. However, they alleged that they were being denied licenses this year.
As the sand mining season is only from October to May, and those in the business were unemployed from June to September, Volvoikar said it was a financial problem for miners to be further unemployed for more months.
“In addition to the four months when we don’t do business, we have been unemployed for two months of our business season,” he lamented.
The Congress backed the cause of Volvoikar, and reached out to the government to help sand miners.
